Couple more wedding pickies...

(And also I had good coffee dates with some of the girls from Shards. Damn, but lately certain people make me feel inspired... It's like falling in love that drives immediately to the camera and paper.)

Vine harvest in a monsoon :D Well, if it was on a flat land on a dry day, it wouldn't be a challenge :D Big big thanks to everybody who helped. I hope you lost ten pounds, being troopers - and I hope you gained them back with my dad's food :D

Forced to write love poetry (for a wedding card) in a hurry, in a car ... :))

No darkness in the night when you're a pair
No limbs numb, deafness in a silence
Everything is a touch, every look is a thought
Everything is an emotion and a promise of belonging... 

I wasn't the official photie on this wedding, I was actually there as a guest, but as church ceremonies make me feel like I'm in Hell and I wouldn't otherwise be allowed in, General told me to just go shoot something. So I endured.. With a little help from my Mark :))) 

I am coming to understand that I am not really afraid of people as I am of disappointment regarding my vision, that half-hearted people undo. Pretty much everything else I enjoy and am able to achieve. Just lazy and dumb folk, that throws me. And I guess I worry they could throw me critically.

Separation anxiety

I am literally on the last pages of Gorgi. The last five or so. Maybe three. I have the pages open and I edit a few lines and then I go away again. I ought to just mail it to Drej, who will proof read them and then I am set to place them for print. Most of the book is already set. Most of the graphic pages also. There's just these few pages left. Just these last five or three...

Drafting the intro...

This is just exercise, but it's approx what the intro will look like. There'll be less shaking of the camera and possible more or less beagle. And some other shots, too. But this is approx of what it will look like. :) And what we experimentally shot today, on a doggie walk around the lake :))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6adYoP1Ywvk&feature=youtu.be

The new bijou

... I've treated myself to - the Sofikleja necklace. <3

Although endings, in which there remains no proof any of the adventure actually happened, are the ones I hate the most, I cannot help but to gravitate towards them..

Great advice from really dick people

As all of great cosmic karma/irony goes, some of the things that mean most to me in this life, came as advice from really fucking lame people. For example, my favourite all time manga series - Samurai Champloo - which changed my personality, my ambitions, my view on the world entirely - AND World of Warcraft, which continues to play a very important role in my artistic development, came from a shitty relation I would rather erase from memory otherwise. Another example is my former sister-in-law, who taught me enough about horses. I hate horses, but occasionally I am forced to deal with them and what she explained in the few short lessons we had, she changed my attitude from a 'no no' to an 'okay, fine'. And the last example being a shitty ex of my relative, who continues to be a shitty townsman in this very very small town and whose comments tend to hurt not just me but people close to me also (usually them more)... But who the other day made a remark about photography which erased my whole problem with what i was trying to achieve and made it incredibly fun and simple. 

So, gosh darn it. How do you ever swim out of that one?

Scouting locations for the 'ruins' memory for Shards :) Day 1

Character portraits for the actresses Bojana and Maja in the upcoming Shards

This certainly is the world's most beautiful toy :D

Whispering stone performance

.. Spent the day shooting the video for Sara's show. Did quite great, actually, or so the clients tell me. Am now a professional video maker :)) *love*

We'll polish it over the next few days and then I'll link it forth. Proudly. Tired like a buckett now. Night, duckies.

An excellent evening to an otherwise questionable afternoon

Thank you (again), sweet Maja. She stole me from a bad moment and took me through good food and great company and so today is marked as a wonderful day. In fact, I love it so much, I am declaring this the end of the week. From now on, Thursdays are officially the last day. So I've had a great week.

La Vie Est Belle Rustika cake

The General also says thank you for the cake. This was a really good cake. It was ginger, pear and blueberry and white chocolate, which is a curious combo, easily screwed up. Another reason why I am so terribly in love with my husband is that when I bring him something so wonderful to eat at night, he takes one bite, looks at me and says: you eat it. Not because it wouldn't be good or he wouldn't like it - but because it is so good he wants me to eat it and watch me love it. 'Tis just the kind of a nutter he is :D

The reason the afternoon sucked donkey balls was meeting the designer for a St. George yearbook (a cultural society thing). I made the photos for it. Four people sat down and were gonna set it up for print, but the designer kept giving me the "you are just the amateur" vibe. He told me to fit the photos he will have to cut them or stretch them or remove the thin black frame... I kept telling them that making the photos was my part of the job and i should probably be trusted to know what i'm doing. But no. He continued to put me off the plate. I probably shouldn't react so dramaticly every time someone does this, but lately I have less than zero tolerance for people telling me I haven't done a good job. Not thematically. Technically. This is me at my best ever. The quality of my work is something I stand by ten times more than when at first such people started hiring me for my good work. I am waiting next for someone to cut the last four lines of my short story, because it would have to be printed on the next page and there's no room or it breaks the composition... Of course at times such people can be perfectly correct. I just completely freak out by it. I just left (I know, I know, so very Vol'jin of me, darn it), but luckily Maja interrupted en route me and took me out for a girl's evening with cake. I enjoyed the closing-time shopping mall and the music on the car radio on the way back: Sky Bridge by Richard Tsang.

GARROSH SURVIVES :DDDDDDDDD

I TOLD you he'll get bitchslapped, but will survive! Told you! Of course now that retard Vol'jin inherited the throne. Dark day for the Horde. Trolls on throne. They can't even dance.

Someone will have to facekick that little shit Wrathion. I'll stand right behind Hellscream when he gets it on. Though the Pandaren will probably eat him before they let him go free again.

Also, stealing this from FB. 'Cause it's very true :P

First attempt at the acrylic (and Class enemy)

Finally started breaking off the caps of my acrylic set. Things are slowly starting to move into my painting direction. Very slowly. But they are.

Also went to see Class Enemy with Drej. We went to Metropol - the movie theater I grew up in. Where I met my best friend, for that matter. Always empty on Wednesday nights, great sound, the cushiest seats. It used to be cheap and the popcorn used to be perfect.

The movie wasn't bad at all. In fact I am starting to really like our movies lately - and this is an unprecedented occurrence.

Wind from the ventilator of change :D
(General's words. not mine :))

Drawing lately :)

Goung through various cute and grotesque phases of a portrait :) My mood goes with it - I love it, I hate it, I love it, I hate it ...:))

Movie predictions

Is there anything more sad than movie predictions (regarding the industry - not speaking globally)? They go down the list of festival hits and write stuff like 'his best movie since (some really good movie) or 'Critics' choice' (never a good sign), 'the king of movie cool's next cult classic in the making'... And those blazing predictions never come through. Couple of things look so awful that if they didn't star the top of whom everyone wants to see (Scalett Johanssen is a sex noir? Of course everyone will go because they want to see her having sex. If she was replaced by an unknown African or Arabian lady, nobody would even hear of this film.), that would be the end of that. 

And the last movie from Miyazaki? What is that about? Did he disown his son?

:D

More interviews with actresses.. I SOOOO can't wait to start shooting.

We had the auditions for Shards yesterday... I thought it went pretty well, six out of 19 people actually showed up and we made some fun, windy videos... I am not sure what they expected, because people will always expect grandiose welcomes and at the end of it will stand little old me. Which can be amusing, considering some are very eager, but utter amateurs and some are experienced enough to know better. I made a mockumentary on in, and even signed up for FB... again. Which I have been hating ever since. Not 24 hours have passed and already there are money issues and doubting my judgement issues and a little bit of disappointment for not winning the lead issues.. I have forgotten the necessity of separating your emotion from reality for these kinds of projects. Because I really love doing them.I am just really, really bad with people. Also weather. :)))

But I love what Drej said, when I said that we will work with lots of ducked tape and roller skates and impro dollies... She agreed that if we were given half a mil, we would still do things exactly the same, we'd just buy our own ducked tape, roller skates and impro dollies :D

Breda

So close and yet so out of reach

Three AM and the mission to get a piece of a broken street lamp failed. General has zero talent for adventure and petty misdemeanour. And I am terribly short.

People, how they come through my brain :)

DREJ
I wonder if she likes how I see her :) Contemplative and a tiny wee bit melancholy. With really cute earrings :D

MAJA
.. And oddly, that's the exact response I got from Maja as well. That she was puzzled by how she's percieved. How it made her think. I really have to talk about this to these people. Perhaps they actually imagine themselves completely different and my illustrations are either quite narrow in interpretation of their character, or I simply made portraits to that part of them that I relate to.

.. There is one more coming up. After the weekend.

"Shards"

Have started downloading royaltes free music for the OST and made an info blog page :))

http://crepinje.blogspot.com/

And then there's that moment when you're trying desperatelly to remember how to write '49' in Latin...

General's line of the week

[talking to my bumm]: "Poor bumm. You get disciplined so harshly. And injustly. Just because the administration up there in the attic bullshits so much. Everybody knows it's them up there who are the quilty party, but it's you who gets the blame. And spanked so much."

Fourteen hours of editing... and this is pretty much how I feel:

.. All that phase where people are looking at me funny for shooting them is being thrown at me all over again. It seems I will have to get through the awkward interaction fiasco all over ... again.

Sleepless part 3

An ode to my old lover, the summer. Oh, fickle and passionate soul mate, you shall be missed.  

The cardinal cause for boredom I've been experiencing so bitterly lately, certainly arrives from the sense of impotence regarding rewards. Even the things I do right turn to shit. Even the things that should reward me financially, cause nothing but trouble. Nothing pushes you further into debt than knowing that eventually you will get a lot of money ... And then you don't get it. My most calm financial status is having no money and expecting none. That is me at my most ethereal. Because what I am really good at is making the most of what I've got. When I do shop, is for unique, expensive things that I then continue to use for a very long (and oddly rewarding) time.

I have gotten all where I am going to get with photography in this place. Certainly, I could shoot exotic, overwhelming portraits if I had traveled to overwhelming, exotic places, and the scenes of city life would shoot themselves if I lived in London or New York. I have been missing that wildly, even got very close to purchasing a city life lens (or Fuji Fix Fine x100 or however that little darling was called, which would serve as the same.) I wonder - is sliding into movies a natural path for a person who lives in a small town in the midst of pretty rural area?

I haven't done these things yet. Like always, I had to get myself into a painful boredom phase (luckily, it only lasts for about half a day and this was very conveniently on the last day of General's absence and the first day of period, so it was really truly disgustingly bad case of it), before I unscrewed into a wholly new ambition. And suddenly, if predictably, whole new parts of my brain come into action.

How does one make a movie? How does one make a good movie? (Is this sounding awfully like the first few times normal people have sex? It had to be perfect, though it's usually kind of awkward ... And then slowly you get to the phase when it comes natural and it's good BECAUSE it's odd and unpredictable?) 

Like all great arts, you only need three things to get things moving: the tool, the the canvas, so to say, and the message. Then, to get things done, you need a system, practice and a lot of good spirit. 

Everything else is there to make things easier and will catch up with you over time.

Like I said, I am really good at managing the most of what I've got.

And also, I am very fast learner, self taught, and very quickly the things I do become very embarrassing to me - by the time they are published, I know so much, I really could have done that a lot better. This is in my opinion the vital blood flow of progressive creativity. Upgrade. My favorite exhibitions are always the Opus Magni...thingies. (Fuck me if I can put that in proper Latin form halfway down the first coffee...) Opium Magnum? That sounds very wrong on many levels.

Anyhoo - the collections of art displayed as chronologically created - what someone did at the start and what someone did at the finish with decades spanning in the midst. Paintings especially can make for a good show regarding this. Also books, but books vary wildly whereas painting styles, if observed systematically, show a sharp red string. 

I have done books. I loved every single one of them, making them, except for the Trips scenario, which continues to be shameful and abusive. Still, even that one was great fun while collecting the material. My mind will always look out for stuff to fit into that project, though it had done that even before they fucked up my love for travel and research. The future project will be a leap in style, if I manage to pull it through, and probably won't be as pleasant as Gorgi, though likely more critically acclaimed. (And it won't be me who takes credit, so there's a nook right there. I just want to see that book exist. It doesn't have to have my name on it. My first ambition as a ghostwriter.)

There is plenty illustration stuff I do will continue to do. And also all kinds of photography, obviously. I still haven't sucked in enough wow factor to satiate my nerdy soul.

So. Movies. The industry of film making, the ultimate entertainment industry, is probably the most rewarding and the most saturated with wannabes. If you think any retard with a cell phone can be a photographer (and their own star model), you should see how many little creeps with daddy money are making features. 

The main problem isn't the fame market, though. I am waaaaay to early in the ambition to even worry about that yet. I am now at the stage where I am learning how to pace myself during the process. I'll explain. 

My very first idea for the experimental movie was the story of a traveling girl, collecting fragments of her soul. This would be very slow, very meditative, very beautiful. I could do that almost like a long music video. I've downloaded 15 gigs of ambient sound effect from car noise to frogs in the evening, so I'd never even need an audio recording session. HOWEVER. Even just looking for the necessary actress spawned attention of people who want to play along and this inspired ideas and in turn invoked bigger ambitions. But getting ahead of myself, with the scenes and with the sets and with the props, is very dangerous. Without mileage, the only thing a newbie gets to rely on is well shaped system, and if there is too much of everything, the system will be a mess. It all all right to just get everyone together and play by ear and cut out the parts that you think are great, but that's still a mesh up, a music video material. Full length feature requires a whole lot of painstaking attention to detail - particularly technical detail. Which I only imagine how you get. I have never tried getting it. And it would be frustrating to fuck up a good project out of sheer ... Well, 

Sleepless part 2

FRAGMENTS OF PAST SOULS

Mireille travels around to places that against all odds are very familiar to her and in each she finds a shard that ultimately assembles into her image (like a doll). People in this story speak an unintelligible language or mutter. She is a passionate, free-spirited world traveler. She smokes, she photographs, she has sex, she even has to steal one of the shards from a museum.

She rates and photographs coffee? She writes her stuff in a notebook, although she also owns an iPad and other modern things. There’s a scene with her charging all her gadgets.

POTTERY SHARD - from a broken pot in an old remote farmhouse: fits as a heard in the hole of torso. This is how the story stars. She is drinking coffee in the uphill trekking cottage and her friend comes to join her. Rain stars to fall and they kiss in the ruined house doorframe. Then they explore and she fits the shard. He already knew what this was about.

CURTAIN WEIGHT - in a posh old hotel: the head of the doll. She stops and even though the hotel is quiet, the bar waiting for the end of an opera show, she asks if she may charge her batteries and places her gadgets all over the room, creating a sort of installation or a flower over the old, dark tables. They pretty much all point at the curtain weight and as she collects her things before the crowd hits, she steals the curtain weight as well. 

PART OF A PHOTO - from a road house stop: eyes fit on the face. As she hitchhikes, she meets a nice guy, a lonely businessman in the making, and after he buys her dinner in a nice hotel, they hitvthe room to have sex. While she showers, he reads her notebook, intrigued by her plan. After sex, while she is sleeping, he reads more and offers to drive her to her next imagined spot, just to see what will happen. He agrees, when he sees that it is in fact pretty much her in the photo, that her theory is correct. 

THE WIRE - that holds a chain mail in a museum together: that wire ties the limbs. She gets it by spooking the overseeing student by kissing the student and the girl shyly runs away. Later, though, the girl catches up with her and asks if she may take a photo of her first girl kiss. Mireille takes one better than the phone and asks for the email to send it, thus sharing future info. 

BIT OF DARK WOOL - she find in a bunch of rocks on a shepherds pasture: her hair. This is in a Scottish-like landscape.

she already has some of the limbs, but she finds

A HOLLOW BONE - in an amphitheatre ruins: her left forearm. She imagines herself a gladiator, losing the arm as the shield broke under a blow. She enacts this with a friend.

 Mireille is a wandering soul. She is really good at this. She even looks like someone who has the world in reins, herself in check and luck under her thumb. She is young, but not a child. She is very lovely, but not kitchy. Her face is very easy to look at, although it usually the things she is looking at that truly draw attention. see, she is a collector. We do not really yet know who or what she collects, but that much is clear. Her movement, although spontaneous and well perceived, has just this one constant.

Changing location, pace, even seasons and means of travel, we get to follow her as she meets various new and old characters - curiously, energetically, carefully or mysteriously, and at times sexually or slightly criminally (but only a little.) we start to notice that among other reasons for travel, she is drawn to certain places for reasons even she is only vaguely comprehensive of - and almost always at those places she collects and object that she finds particular in some way. We begin to notice, along with her (though this is no longer a surprise for her) that no matter what the object (or shard) originally was, it is a part of something she is putting back together.

By the end of he whole story, we get to notice she has, having gone practically all over the world or whatever, gathered enough to create a clearer picture: be it a doll or a plaque or a statue, it is an almost too obvious portrait of her. We begin to realize that she is collecting pieces of her past lives, with all the hints of their quality, into her soul as a whole. Even as the story ends, even if the doll is far from being finished, we can see that this is an excellent reason or leitmotif for a wandering soul to wander. She may even leave behind, including this life, enough for her next incarnation to repeat the adventure. 

Locations of shards, past life and companion

(in no particular order)

- an old ruined country house (a shard of pot), with Snufkin-alternative

- a road-side stop cafe (eyes from a photo on the wall) in some remote area

- something from a museum that requires stealing